At the end of the first week of 2018, have you stuck to your New Year Resolutions?

If you’re enthusiasm is beginning to disappear, you’re not alone. I read somewhere recently, that 92% of people who set New Year Resolutions, have given up by the 15th January!

Maybe you didn’t set any resolutions, because you’ve set them in the past and never quite succeeded in achieving them?

In either case, maybe it’s just that you’ve been setting yourself up for failure, in the way you set your goals.

One thing is for sure, if you don’t set goals, you’re definitely not going to achieve them!!

So here are my 5 TOP TIPS, to help you set yourself up for success?

Write your goals down

Apparently, only 3% of the population write down their goals and only 14% of the population set themselves any goals at all.

If you set goals but you store them in your head rather than writing them down, you’re reducing your rate of success by more than 50%. Writing down your goals massively increases your chances of actually achieving them.

Set SMART Goals but with a proviso….

SMART normally stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. However, from now on, I’m going to change the meaning of the R to RELEVANT rather than REALISTIC. Why?Because, it’s been proven that the most successful people don’t set realistic goals, they set challenging goals that are relevant to their ambitions and values.

When we set realistic goals, we’re often dumbing them down, because we fear that making them too challenging, is likely to increase our chances of failure. None of us wants to shout to the world that we FAILED to achieve our goals do we?

Research has shown that the people who are most likely to succeed in achieving their goals, are those who challenge themselves, because setting a challenging goal that we can associate with, creates a much greater emotional connection with the goal. When we set realistic goals, they may feel boring and we lose that emotional boost and feeling of excitement, which means we’re much more likely to give up….

Set a Challenging goal that is aligned to your VALUES.

Values are those things that are fundamentally important to us and therefore, when we recognise the relevance to our life and we can identify the benefits of achieving it and the downside of not achieving it, we’re much more likely to pursue it and we’ll feel compelled to continue when the going gets tough!

There is a difference between setting a Challenging Goal and a goal that is completely overwhelming and feels impossible. It’s important to find the balance between a boring goal and a goal that is completely unrealistic and likely to overwhelm. Challenging is somewhere in the middle and pushes us beyond our comfort zone.

When we look at our journey toward a goal as an opportunity to learn and grow, regardless of the final outcome, we’re less likely to let fear of failure hold us back.

Establish a Dream Team

Build supportive relationships with people who you can share your goal with and who will encourage you and motivate you to keep going.

Avoid sharing your goals with people who may love you, but who may also discourage you, because they don’t share your future vision or they have their own fears and insecurities and they worry that they may lose you, if you change.

So, if you haven’t written yourself any goals for 2018 yet, now is definitely the right time!

If you’d like a copy of the Brilliance Within Goal Setting Workbook, let me know in the comments section below and I’ll send one to you.

Remember – writing down your goals will put you in the top 3% of the population and will increase your chance of success by 50%!

Goals move your wishes into reality. They begin in the imagination, so dream big!

29 Comments

Jonathan Clark

January 17, 2018 / 4:00 am

Hi Wendy! Excellent post! Your 5 tips are great advice and your explanations are well written as always. I too am a big fan of NOT making “realistic” goals for the same reasons you stated — it can keep you from stretching yourself beyond any perceived limitations. We need to see what we’re really made of! There are enough other forces out there that often threaten to discourage us and hold us back. We don’t need to add our minds to that list! Of course we don’t mean setting a goal that’s just going to suffocate us with pressure, but if your spirit moves you to set a goal GO FOR IT! We get one life so let’s make the most of it.

Excellent tips! Interesting thought about revising “SMART”‘s “realistic” and making it “relevant.” You’re absolutely right – I often fall into the trap of setting “realistic” goals, but I don’t quite set my sights high enough. I wonder how my life would change if I’d reach for the stars just a bit more!
I also like your point about establishing a Dream Team. That core group of supporters is just so darn important!

Brilliant – thank you! I’m glad you like the ‘relevant’ – it’s really important to make sure that our goals are what we really want – I know I’ve sometimes set them because I thought I should rather than setting goals that are relevant and meaningful to me.. If you’re interested in joining the Facebook group for that added bit of support as part of your Dream Team, let me know – it’d be great to have you as part of the group – Brilliance Within Your Life or Brilliance Within 90 Day Habit Changing Challenge Group… xx

Hi Kelsey – I’m not sure why but I couldn’t reply to your reply to my comment on your post – it came up as ‘invalid security key’ – I’m not sure what that means… So here’s my reply about giving up work.. Yes – the lightbulb finally switched on! No, I still blog part time. I qualified as a hypnotherapist 20 years ago but still worked full time in business, so now I’m focussing on my hypnotherapy and some business consultancy work. I’ve worked on niching my blog too into mainly a personal development blog, compared to when I first started blogging about anything and everything.. Yep – what felt like the worst period, transformed my life for the better! x

I think that if people focused more on an actual lifestyle shift (which takes time), rather than a sudden ‘New Year’s Resolution’, they’d be more successful in achieving their goal(s). It’s ludicrous to think that a deeply rooted habit(s) that’s been in place for months or years, can suddenly be overridden at the stroke of midnight changing from 2017 to 2018. You know what I mean? 🙂

I agree Chrissy and I have a Facebook Group called Brilliance Within 90 Day Habit Changing Habit Challenge group, to support people to make changes at any time throughout the year. The group encourages people to take some form of action toward their desired goal or habit every day for 90 days and research has shown it takes an average of 60 days for most people to install a new habit. It’s great to hear your view and I completely agree. xx

Beautiful post Wendy!! Loved this post. You was always been Amazing, and been very inspirational for us every time in each post. Your have supported me in many ways from your blog. Thanks a lot again. You are absolutely genious😍

Oh Sumith thank you so so much. What a beautiful comment for me to receive today! You are an amazing inspiration to me too and I admire you so much – you’ve grown your blog and your facebook groups and get so much interaction, which continues to inspire me to keep going too. Thank you so much and it’s lovely to have the support of a fellow Mancunian!! May your dreams for 2018 come true!!! xx

Wonderful post Wendy. I’ve set myself some goals and intentions. I’ve written them down, penned them into a letter to the Universe and buried them in my garden. Bring on 2018. I’m ready! Big hugs to you my friend. May all your goals, wishes and dreams be fulfilled this year. xo

OH wow – I love that idea of burying them in the garden – how fab!! I’m going to copy you on that one Miri.. I’m ready too and looking forward to breaking through some of my own barriers on the NLP course which starts on Friday.. Big hugs returned with love and I’ve got a feeling that your dreams are being heard out there in that vast Universe and the stars are aligning…. xxx

Love that you’re going to do the same Wendy. Go bury that letter and then trust that all will come up as intended. Very exciting times ahead. Good luck with your course on Friday, hope all goes well. I’ll be thinking of you. xo

Thanks Miri – I’m going to do the ‘burying’ today and leave it to the Universe… Yes exciting! I’m managing to get through the pre-course study and hopefully it will slot into place on the training! I’ll keep you posted xx

Yep – as you say laughter is the best medicine (although it didn’t do much for my streaming nose!!)

Anonymous

January 8, 2018 / 9:41 am

Wonderful post Wendy. I’ve set myself some goals and intentions. I’ve written them down, penned them into a letter to the Universe and buried them. Bring on 2018. I’m ready! Big hugs to you my friend. May all your goals, wishes and dreams be fulfilled this year. xo